Duluth store stops selling "My Indian name is Crawling Drunk" shirts

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One Duluth tourist store along Canal Park apparently thought visitors would love to take home a souvenir t-shirt making fun of drunk American Indians they saw on their trip. Once area residents discovered the incredibly racist shirts and called out the "I Love Duluth" store, the owner stopped selling them.

The shirts had sayings like "My Indian name is 'Drinks Like Fish' " and "My Indian name is 'Crawling Drunk.'
Really classy.

It's Duluth's epic fail of the year.

​The store's owner, Simon Shaked, told the Duluth News Tribune they aren't selling the shirts after a number of complaints from officials from several organizations. He says he didn't realize the shirts would be offensive to American Indians... or anyone for that matter.

But he didn't dump the shirts altogether. He put the shirts farther back in the store and sold them for a deeply discounted price. When the Duluth Human Rights Officer visited the store, he told him he would sell them all to him at cost to get them off the shelf. How thoughtful.

The decision was prompted by a visit to the store last Thursday by Duluth's Human Rights Officer, Bob Grytdahl, and Donna Ennis of the Duluth American Indian Commission. They told Shaked the commission had been receiving lots of complaints about the T-shirts.

"We have a lot of joke T-shirts. ... When we bought this one we didn't know it would be offensive but he explained to me why [American Indians] would take offense and we agreed to take them down," Shaked said.

Luckily the store owner was understanding in the end and agreed to stop ordering the shirts now that they are sold out. We're just glad visitors to Duluth won't be leaving one of our great Minnesota destinations making drunk Indian jokes. We've got a little more class than that.

If you wanted to see the shirts, we found them for sale here and here.